Study Shows Lack of National Consensus on Teaching K-12 Students about Human-Environmental Impacts

6/29/06

New research from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory analyzed
the standards across education divisions (elementary, middle
school and high school) for mentions of the ways humans or
society impacts the environment, the ways the environment impacts
society or the ways individuals impact the environment.

Researchers
found that the
tendency to emphasize or de-emphasize human/environment interactions
in state science standards does not fall into regional clusters,
nor into the familiar red-state/blue-state political pattern.
Also, across the nation, "individuals impact
environment"
topics
get less attention in science standards than either "humanity
impacts environment" or "environment impacts humanity"
topics.

The destruction caused by natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and human activities such as mountaintop removal mining are powerful examples of how the environment and society are tightly interwoven. But to what extent do, or should, state science curricula in the U.S. seek to investigate or influence the nature of this interaction?

That is a question posed by new research published
in a special issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education. This
research examines the degree to which the individual state science
education standards encourage study of society and the environment
as interrelated systems.

What the researchers  scientists at the
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a member of The Earth Institute
at Columbia University  found is surprising for its lack
of consensus. Across the nation, there is generally more attention
paid to teaching about how human society impacts the environment
than for teaching about how the environment impacts humans and
society, though support
for both varies widely throughout the country. Moreover, in most
states there is minimal or no support in the standards for teaching
about the ways in which individual actions affect the environment.

"I do think that K-12 students should study interactions between humans and the environment in school," said Kim Kastens, a Doherty senior research scientist at Lamont-Doherty and lead author of the study. "Their generation will have to cope with serious environmental problems, and they should understand the environmental impacts of the decisions they will be making as individuals and in their careers."

The researchers first coded each of 49 state
science curriculum standards to assess if and in what manner K-12
educators are being directed by their state standards to direct
students' attention and concern to issues of human interactions
with the Earth. They then analyzed the standards across education
divisions (elementary, middle school and high school) for mentions
of the ways humans or society impacts the environment, the ways
the environment impacts society or the ways individuals impact
the environment.
In all but four states, the researchers found more emphasis on
how people and society affect the environment than on how the environment
affects people and society. In every state without exception, they
found less emphasis on how individuals impact the environment than
on how society as a whole impacts the environment.

The researchers did not include results for
individual states in order to focus attention on national patterns
emerging from the nation's 49 independent educational bodies. In
particular, they found a lack of consensus over whether or not
human-environmental interactions were important enough to direct
that students turn their attention to such issues as water pollution
or natural disasters at any point during their education.

"What our study shows is that there is no consensus at all across the nation about whether or not human-environment interactions should be part of science education," said Kastens. "In some states, it's as though you had landed in a space ship on a planet with no sentient beings or civilization. You study the air and water and rocks and plants and animals, but do not study any object or process caused by humans. In some other states, human-environment interactions are shoved into all sorts of nooks and crannies in the science standards, even when a basic science focus might be more appropriate."